Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: I feel like everybody has spam musubi, even though that's not their specialty.

They put spam musubi on their counter, and people will just grab those.

So, yeah, it's all over the place.

You will not have a hard time finding spam musubi.

In Hawaiʻi, they're everywhere.

Yeah.

Robert Pennybacker: In the islands, our ethnic melting pot has created a diverse community of ʻono or delicious food.

Let's take a closer look at our local cuisine here.

On ʻOno!

Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: My parents are actually from Japan.

I have two sisters.

There's three of us that were born and raised here.

So we wanted to open a musubi shop that had both Japanese and local concepts, and we just kind of put it together.

Robert Pennybacker: Yumiʻs parents, Masumi and Tetsuya Goto opened Got'z Grindz in 2019 where they serve Japanese and local style food, including spam musubi.

Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: A spam musubi would be rice.

It's like, usually a rice ball, and then it has a slice of spam and seaweed on it, nori.

But we have, like, a bacon egg spam.

We have bacon avocado, like, we have so many different toppings on our spam musubis and then we have our more traditional Japanese style musubis, which would be like umeboshi, salmon, kombu.

I don't know anybody that doesn't like musubis.

And it's also very convenient.

We wanted to do something that was, like a graband go, kind of a concept.

Manabu Asaoka / Mana Musubi: Typically, Hawaiʻi's spam musubi is like the rectangle, but my musubi is Japanese traditional style is triangle.

Robert Pennybacker: The design and portability of Hawaiʻi's Spam musubi are very much inspired by its roots in Japanese culture.

Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: When you ask a local person, "Oh, can you grab me a musubi?

", they tend to think spam, whereas, if you told somebody that's Japanese, can you grab me a musubi, it would be something more like a salmon musubi or umeboshi musubi.

So it's a I think that's the difference there.

Manabu Asaoka / Mana Musubi: When I tried Hawaiʻi's musubi when I first came here as a tourist, then I enjoyed the rectangle style musubi, but sorry, it's kind of big.

But in Japan, Japanese style musubi, smaller, lighter and people enjoy at least two or three different kinds, but they are light a meal.

Hawaiʻi musubi filling is typically spam, but actually there is no spam musubi in Japan.

So it's huge difference.

Robert Pennybacker: Spam was introduced to Hawaiʻi in 1937 and became an important ration for soldiers and civilians during World War II.

By the time the war had ended, spam had solidified itself as part of Hawaiʻi culture.

Melissa Chang / Food Blogger: I guess in Hawaiʻi, we eat more spam per capita than anywhere in the US.

We celebrate spam.

We have a Spam Jam every year in Waikiki that draws like 10s of 1000s of tourists.

Well, not just tourists, but locals trying all these different ways to eat spam.

Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: We eat spam.

That's what the people want, and that is what we have, because there's a demand for it.

I mean, that's what we eat.

Melissa Chang / Food Blogger: I think a lot of people on the mainland are not really exposed to spam.

Someone in the mainland told me that spam stands for spare parts of animal meat.

But actually, and I did this research on this, LA Times says that it's pure pork shoulder, so it's not as bad as you think it is, but just people make things up in their heads.

Robert Pennybacker: People in Hawaii share a special relationship with spam, but when did its fusion with musubi begin?

Some credit Barbara Funamura, a woman from Kauaʻi who started selling spam musubi in the 1980s Unknown: My wife opened this shop called Joni Hana in 1983 and with the opening of the restaurant, she had this thing that she called spam musubi, you know.

And that's the first time anybody ever heard of spam musubi.

One of the workers introduced this mold that made that familiar rectangular shape.

As it turns out, the spam also fits exactly, without any modification, into this thing that you know that's been pressing the sushi.

Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: You just cook your white rice, make a ball with it, then you put your fried spam on top, and then you get a piece of nori, which is the dried seaweed, and then you wrap it, and you're good.

Robert Pennybacker: Today, musubi is a go to snack in Hawaiʻi, and for the Gotos, it's how they do business.

Yumi Goto / Got'z Grindz: I grew up with my mom making me, you know, home lunch.

It would be Japanese style musubi.

But then the manapua truck will come around, and we will buy the spam musubi, right?

Over time, you know, as we grew up, we started creating these combinations, because it's the best of both, like combining the two.

And I think that's what really works, and I think that's what makes our shop unique.

That is our comfort food.

It's spam with the rice and then the nori.

So, yeah, I think it's something that we just grew up with eating.